Why didn’t Putin spend all that money on helping poor people in Russia as opposed to funding a BS war that he’s not going to be allowed to win?

[Anonymous]

[Curmudgeon]

Because "nationalism is a hell of a drug".

If you look at the Ukraine War today, Russian military performance has actually been quite pathetic. The areas that Russia has "taken"? They *did not* conquer them; they were *invited in* by ethnic Russian supermajorities in those areas, ethnic Russians unhappy at - and backlashing against - the hyper-nationalistic turn that ethnic Ukrainians have taken in recent years, which has led to ethnic Ukrainians metaphorically pooping all over the ethnic Russians.

And this Ukrainian hyper-nationalism is totally understandable, as the Soviet system was pooping all over them for decades. But that wasn't the fault of the average Ethnic Russian, who was just a pawn in that whole system too.

And it gets worse when you realize that the boundaries of the former "Soviet Republics" (sic) were not drawn with the various ethnics in mind, but rather for internal Party reasons. Stalin certainly ruthlessly moved many ethnics around, resentments that drive Ukrainian nationalism now, but even long before him, many areas of (the on a paper map) Ukraine today were full of ethnic Russians. The Crimea region has been overwhelmingly ethnic Russian for centuries, and Sevastopol was an important Russian port back to Peter the Great days.

And even granting Stalin's brutal moving of people around, after 80 odd years, we have to accept that people are where they are. What are we going to do? Kick the Russians that came into the on paper Ukraine from Stalin's time forward, as I am sure the Ukrainian nationalists wish? So, will Poland want the "Kresy" back? And Germany East Prussia and Silesia? Those borders that we have today were also made by Stalin's brutality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kresy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Prussia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesia

And even if Putin is the greatest nogoodnik around today, *his views were shared by Russian leaders before him and will be shared by those who follow him, even those who might topple him*. Even Boris Yeltsin, the most pro-American leader Russia ever had, raised concerns about mistreatment of millions of ethnic Russians in "the near abroad" and how the map might have to be redrawn to address those ethnic Russians.

And maybe that is just the fate of Empires: when they break up, they do not break up along nice neat nation-state and ethnic lines:
--The Ottoman Empire fell apart, and the Armenian Genocide followed.
--Austria-Hungary fell apart, millions of ethnic Germans found themselves on the wrong side of a line, and Adolf Hitler took advantage of that.
--And let's not forget the former Yugoslavia, with Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and ethnic Albanians killing each other in a free-for-all of wars.

What we are seeing now is just the long delayed fruits of the breakup of the Soviet Empire. I laos predict a former "Soviet Republic" (sic) like Moldova, made up of (1) ethnic Russians who want to be with Russia (in a strip called Transnistria), (2) ethnic Ukranians in the southern tips who want to be with Ukraine, and (3) ethnic Romanians in the rest of it who never wanted to leave Romania to begin with but Stalin did it to them, might get carved up like a cake, hopefully peacefully.

Even relatively peaceful ends of empires, like The British Empire, had:
--the India/Pakistan/Bangladesh Wars, with thousands killed and millions of people forced to move.
--Cyprus, with ethnic Greeks and Turks killed and many more forced to move.
--the Biafra War in formerly British Nigeria.

[CALIGVLA]

The performance of the Russian army is way far from pathetic if you ask me.

They've been facing the strongest land army in Europe... With a fraction of its army. They invaded Ukraine with a force similar in size to the US force which was deployed to Iraq in 2003, a much weaker country in comparison to Ukraine, when every Western analyst thought they'd send a force of 400k and overburden their own military.

The US is losing this proxy war and the taxpayer will pay for that as usual.

[Curmudgeon]

@CALIGVLA Fair enough, perhaps my perception is skewed by successful Soviet crushings of various Eastern European uprisings in Cold War days. I honestly expected the Russians to have pushed all the way to Odessa by now.

That said, your last observation is sadly correct. If our experiences in Somalia, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan have proved anything, is that the USA should avoid other people's ethnic and tribal wars. I dare say we have enough of our own issues with that at home. It is one thing to topple the anti-American asshole and put in a pro-American asshole, but to stick around and to try to "nation-build" is futile.

[CALIGVLA]

And those conflicts were before the start of the woke takeover of our military...

Man, I'm really concerned with the US military performance in a major scale war during this "Emma and her two moms"-era.

[Asker]

@CALIGVLA a stronger LGBTQIAFKLNVCRT+ military means a strong america
No need to be bigoted

[Curmudgeon]

Asker, ha ha

[NamerOfStars]

Because Russia, like Ireland and war itself, never changes. You can't built lasting glory atop a mountain of skulls, and Putin had a real chance to turn Russia into something genuinely better- but he chose otherwise.

Invest in infrastructure, developing your economy to the point where you're more than just an exporter of natural resources? Begin the slow but stable process of building your country into a world power again? Nah. More needless suffering and death, instead.

[Anonymous]

Putin is a very clever man but he is only one man and the structure of his power means that its really just him making the plans and anyone else in power postions is too busy trying to survive. He's been walked into a team in Ukraine and now can't get out because if he retreats he looks weak and will be ousted from power, if he keeps fighting the Russian economy will continue to suffer and the Russian military will get weaker and look weaker and eventual defeat means he will be ousted. If you are going to play the military strongman dictator then you can't be seen as weak.

[DryGermanGuy]

He is an ex-KGB operative who repeatedly has said and written that the dissolution of the Soviet Empire was the greatest tragedy of his life. Put two and two together and we are where we are today (Belarus a satellite state, Ukraine attacked, Baltic states threatened).

[DryGermanGuy]

Quote: "When describing the origins of the war in Ukraine, the book cites Putin, who has repeatedly claimed the invasion of Ukraine war started in order to “end the fighting started by the west”. The history book also describes Ukraine as an “artificial state”, parroting Putin’s long essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, which states that “Russia was robbed, indeed” when Ukraine gained independence in 1991."

www.theguardian.com/.../russia-releases-history-schoolbook-praising-ukraine-invasion

[FunkyMonkee]

Probably the same reason Biden hasn't. How many BILLIONS of our tax dollars has he pissed away in the past 2 years that COULD'VE and SHOULD'VE been used to help us?